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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Tag: Vera Farmiga

Conjuring 2, The (2016)*

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Title: The Conjuring 2
Rating: R
Directed by: James Wan
Written by: Carey Hayes, James Wan and David Leslie Johnson
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Frances O’Connor, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh and Patrick McAuley
Release Date: 6/10/2016
Running Time: 134 minutes

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IMDb

Lorraine and Ed Warren travel to north London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by malicious spirits.


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Closer to the Moon (2013)*

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Title: Closer to the Moon
Rating: NR
Director: Nae Caranfil
Writer: Nae Caranfil
Stars: Vera Farmiga, Mark Strong and Harry Lloyd
Release Date: 3/7/2014
Running Time: 112 minutes

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A Romanian police officer teams up with a small crew of old friends from the World War II Jewish Resistance to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie.


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Special thanks to Frank S. for this submission


The Judge Review – 2 out of 5 Stars

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Robert Downey Jr. said in an interview that he was a lock for a nomination for The Judge. Frankly, I can kind of see why. I won’t go as far as to say that it’s one of my favorite performances of the year but in a better movie I can see him and Robert Duvall getting nominations for their excellent work in this movie. Sadly, this is one of those movies where if you take away all of the great cast, you are left with a flat, bland melodrama that feels like 2 and a ½ hours of watching a Hallmark movie with a group of relatives, it’s long, uncomfortable and emotionless.

Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is an intelligent yet arrogant lawyer who only cares about money. After he finds out his mother dies, Hank returns to his hometown to catch up with his two brothers and his bitter, stern father (Robert Duvall) who he resents. When it turns out that his father may or may not have killed somebody, Hank must become his lawyer and keep him from going to jail.

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Picture in your mind the kind of movie that would play on Bravo in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Everything you have in your mind comes close to the experience of watching The Judge. There is not a single thing about this movie screenplay or directing wise that comes off as an inspired or original idea. When you first hear the premise, you may think to yourself that it sounds like at least a half way decent movie. There is enough room for you to show a complex character driven, courtroom drama that drives into the relationship between these two very different people, one a respectable authority figure and the other a cynical, self-centered worker. There are moments throughout where you can almost see glimpses of an original concept that could be accomplished if the writer had the nerve to go out of the boundaries. These brief times don’t make up for how the movie never escapes what it so clearly is from the first second.

There’s nothing three dimensional about any of the characters and most of them are as well written as the definitions of the tropes they come off as at first glance. There’s the smug, evil lawyer prosecuting Hank’s dad, there’s the whimsical, possibly autistic brother who records everything, you have the assistant to Hank who is a wacky, small-town guy and then there’s the oldest brother who’s into sports. Every character in this movie has been done a thousand times and the screenplay doesn’t go out of its way to make them more than just clichés you would expect in this type of lifeless, small town, family drama.

There was never a place where this movie went that surprised me and I feel I was able to predict at least 75% of everything that happened, the other 25% of stuff being stuff so horrifically sentimental, vomit inducing and cheesy that I gave the movie at least enough respect to believe that it wouldn’t go there. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, a big city lawyer has to go to a quirky, small town. First he doesn’t like being there but then he begins to find a delightful, charm in it, rinse and repeat. Concept and performances can only take you too far when you’re dealing with something as forgettable as this. The Judge also should be proud of its terrible sense of humor. Whereas Tusk was juvenile and stupid comedy, the humor here is so shockingly, obvious that it doesn’t make any sense. This movie is dry humor at its worst; the jokes are so flat and witless that they make those campy, fun dad jokes on the internet look like Louis C.K. It’s the kind of jokes your grandmother would get a slight chuckle out of while knitting a sweater. The food equivalent of this screenplay is refrigerated, 1 week old, chicken soup, every joke, every character, every story arc can be seen from a mile away and the writers absorb every stereotype, every trope, and every overused plot device rather than try to move themselves away from that stuff.

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The directing doesn’t help either, David Dobkin directs with this very heavy, overly serious style that makes it even more energy-less and lacking in originality. The music by Thomas Newman is awful; it’s every late 90’s, melodrama score fathomable. You play this music usually for stern, health insurance ads that are trying to sell you something that is safe. It’s not often where we get back to back movies that bring out how much better a score can make a movie (Gone Girl) and how much worse it can make it (this one). Again, Dobkin embraces exactly the kind of movie that this looks like, a stale, forgettable family drama, and he does it without a single drop of passion. I will give this movie one credit; this movie was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be to sit through. Don’t get me wrong, this movie feels long but I think the editor did the best that he could with the garbage he was given. The story for as bad as it was did kept the ball rolling at least and I never wanted to choke to death on popcorn because of how boring it was which is definitely better than what can be said for snooze fest of The Monuments Men.

There is one thing keeping this from 1 and ½ stars: the cast. It still baffles me how they could get such a talented group of actors to do such a great job in such a huge waste of time. Surprisingly, none of the actors are sleepwalking their way through their roles. Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall are both at their best here and they both get to show off why they are believed to be such acclaimed and praised performers. Duvall gives one of his best performances in years here and Downey continues to be one of the most charismatic actors working in Hollywood today, in a weak supporting year, Duvall would probably get in regardless of the quality of the feature. The rest of the cast is good from Vera Farmiga to Billy Bob Thornton who fresh off of his incredible, career best turn in Fargo. All of this combined disappoints me how a director and a writer can be so bad and yet the cast is so good.

Without a doubt, The Judge is your average Hallmark movie with a budget and an admittedly amazing cast. Prepare for a journey of sheer blandness with every dumb, obnoxious, drama trope thrown in. Comparing it to other recent, dramas that weren’t good, it’s not as boring as The Monuments Men, not as annoying as August: Osage Country and not as offensive as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but it’s still pretty bad based on how much it sticks to the checklist with no attention to memorability. 80 years from now, The Judge will play once more on a classic movies channel at 3 am in the morning, only 50 people will be watching it with little to no focus and then when it ends the movie will never be heard from or watched ever again.

Rating:(2/5)

Review by: Ryan M.

Release Date: 10/10/2014

Rating: R

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton and Vincent D’Onofrio

Directed by: David Dobkin

Screenplay by: Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque

Story by: David Dobkin and Nick Schenk

Judge, The (2014)

TheJudgePoster

Title: The Judge
Rating: R
Director: David Dobkin
Writer: Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeremy Strong and Dax Shepard
Release Date: 10/10/2014
Running Time: 141 minutes

Official Site
IMDb

Big city lawyer Hank Palmer returns to his childhood home where his father, the town’s judge, is suspected of murder. Hank sets out to discover the truth and, along the way, reconnects with his estranged family.


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At Middleton (2013)

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TITLE: At Middleton

RELEASE DATE: 9/5/2013

RATING: R

Two parents fall in love over the course of a single day while playing hooky from their children’s college tour.

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NOTE: In loving memory of Caren Bohrman.


CONTEST – The Conjuring Blu-ray Giveaway!

CONGRATULATIONS TO DONNA C. FOR WINNING THIS CONTEST!

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ENTERING, BE SURE TO CHECK BACK OFTEN FOR MORE EXCITING CONTESTS!

Our friends over at Warner Bros. are celebrating the Blu-ray release of their summer hit “The Conjuring” and they want to give one lucky visitor here a copy of The Conjuring on Blu-ray!

Based on a true story, the movie tells the horrifying account of how famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were summoned to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in a secluded farmhouse which they recently bought. In fighting this powerful demonic being, the Warrens find themselves in the middle of the most terrifying case of their lives!

Get The Conjuring on Blu-ray & DVD October 22nd!

5 Things to Know Before You Watch The Conjuring: Interactive GIFs! – Move your mouse across the GIFs to control them and read the freaky facts to prepare for the scariest movie of the year!

The Conjuring 5 Things to know… INTERACTIVE GIFS!

1) The Conjuring is directed by the acclaimed James Wan, the Australian-born director of the fright-fests Insidious and the Saw series. His Twitter handle is @CreepyPuppet. Say no more.

2) The Conjuring has been given an “R” rating by the MPAA. Not because of blood, gore, or violence, but simply because it’s just so scary from start to finish!

3) The Conjuring’s cast and crew experienced creepy events during filming. Scratches appeared out of nowhere on Vera Farmiga’s computer soon after she agreed to act in the movie, the crew were routinely woken by something in the “witching hour” between 3 and 4AM, and the real-life Carolyn Perron fell and broke her hip while visiting the set.

4) The Rhode Island farmhouse where The Conjuring is set once belonged to an accused witch, Bathsheba, who tried to sacrifice her children to the devil and killed herself in 1863.

5) Hold your applause! The Conjuring will make you terrified to clap! Whether it’s playing a traditional game of hide-and-seek by following the clapping sounds like the mother and daughter in the movie, or being terrorized by ghostly claps in different rooms of the haunted farmhouse, these claps throughout the movie will give you the creeps!

Use the app below to enter this contest. We will select a random winner on November 5, 2013. The prize will be a copy of The Conjuring on Blu-ray!

 

Again, we will select a random winner on November 5, 2013. You must use the app above to enter. Once a winner is chosen, we will contact them for a mailing address.  The Winners reply with shipping address must be received by November 6, 2013. The prize will be sent via FedEx or UPS.  No P.O. Boxes please. The prize is provided by Warner Bros. and will be shipped from them.  Warner Bros. is responsible for providing the prize to the winner and not AfterCredits.com. Each household is only eligible to win 1 The Conjuring Blu-ray via blog reviews and giveaways. Only one entrant per mailing address per giveaway. If you have won the same prize on another blog, you will not be eligible to win it again. Winner is subject to eligibility verification. Giveaway open to the U.S. & Canada only.

Conjuring, The (2013)*

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TITLE: The Conjuring

RELEASE DATE: 7/19/2013

RATING: R

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives.

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Up in the Air (2009)*

TITLE: Up in the Air

RELEASE DATE: 12/25/2009

RATING: R

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During Credits? Yes

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Orphan (2009)*

TITLE: Orphan

RELEASE DATE: 7/24/2009

RATING: R

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During Credits? Yes

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Higher Ground (2011)

TITLE: Higher Ground

RELEASE DATE: 8/26/2011

RATING: R

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During Credits? No

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